You're the antidote to everything except for me
by moffwithhishead
Summary: Prompt: Imagine Person A having fallen into a coma and Person B endlessly holds vigil by their bedside. Person B rests their forehead against Person A's forehead and whisper, "Please, please wake up." [Destiel, one-shot, angst-adjacent, M to be safe, etc.]


**A/N: I was bored in my JOUR and this happened. The original title of this story was supposed to be "Fuckin' witches, man" but I didn't know if FF would let me call it that. Attempted a slightly different style here. Reviews are nice.**

**(PS title is from FOB's new song)**

**Prompt: Imagine Person A having fallen into a coma and Person B endlessly holds vigil by their bedside. Person B rests their forehead against Person A's forehead and whisper, "Please, please wake up."**

* * *

It was supposed to be a routine job: three dead in a small suburb outside of Chicago, all of them died under suspicious circumstances and there were hex bags at every scene. Sam had figured out the witch was a young girl, seventeen if she was lucky, and had followed her to the warehouse where she was working out of. The next night the two Winchesters and their fallen angel followed the girl again to the warehouse. For reasons neither brother is quite sure of, Castiel went in first. Castiel went in alone.

Sam and Dean got held up by traps set around the outside of the warehouse and made it inside in time to see the witch standing over a bleeding Castiel and chanting a spell. Girl didn't even see Sam coming. Dean had Castiel in his arms before her dead body hit the ground and all three of them were out the doors in under two minutes rushing to get the now human angel to the hospital. Cas kept fading in and out of consciousness - he was losing a lot of blood very fast - and Dean kept murmuring the same thing the entire drive there, "Stay with me man, c'mon Cas, stay with me..."

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for three days and this is the first night that Sam leaves Dean at the hospital to watch over their friend while he goes back to the motel and researches to see if there's anything, any sort of spell or curse that the witch could have used on him.

The witch had done a good amount of damage, to put it kindly. Castiel had a severe concussion, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a fractured cheekbone and a six inch gash on his arm that took thirty two stitches to close up. The doctors aren't sure when, or if, he'll wake up and Dean doesn't remember the last time he got more than three hours of sleep.

It's a commotion every time the nurses try to get him to leave Castiel's room but that night is especially bad. Dean flat out refuses to leave him alone and he knows that the nurses can't stay in here with Cas. When they bring in the security guard and forcibly remove him from the room, Dean waits until the nurses are gone again and sneaks back in. He immediately crawls into bed next to Cas and just starts talking to him, praying to him like he did every night when they were in Purgatory. They're almost the same prayers too.

The nurses don't have the heart to kick him out again tonight. This is the first night that Dean sleeps with Cas.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for four days and Dean has learned the nurses schedules. Most of them know him by name now. Jill, the morning nurse, brings him pie from the cafeteria today. It's blueberry, Cas' favorite. He saves him a slice of the awful pie and tells him about it that night when he's lying next to the angel again. Dean wonders why he can't leave Cas alone, why the idea of doing anything without Cas terrifies him, why he kisses the angel's forehead every time he wants to. He doesn't figure out the answer.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for five days and Alice, Dean's favorite nurse, is on duty right now. She's promised to watch Cas while he goes down to the cafeteria to get some coffee. Sam is coming by this afternoon and Dean got two hours of sleep last night; he wants to be coherent when his brother comes. The only reason he's doing this is because Alice reminds him of Missouri and if he can trust anyone to keep Cas safe, it's Missouri. Still, he makes the trip quickly and doesn't waste time with creamers or sugars.

The first thing he hears when the elevator doors open is doctors and nurses yelling at each other. "Code blue! Milton, code blue!" The second thing Dean hears is someone telling him to watch it when he shoves them to the side and runs down the hall in the same direction as the doctors. The third thing Dean hears is his coffee hitting the floor and someone pulling him away from the room. The fourth thing he hears is Sam's voice, telling him to calm down and to stop trying to hit him. The fifth thing he hears is the heartbeat monitor going back to normal.

Dean's in the room as soon as he hears the heartbeat and resting his forehead against Cas' to make sure he's real, that he's really still there. Castiel's face is wet and Dean realizes that he's crying, that he's been crying for a while, and that the person sobbing is him. "Don't you ever fucking do that to me again you asshole!" Nobody stops him when he crawls into bed next to Cas.

That night Dean promises his angel that he's not going to leave his side again. He figures out the answer to last night's question and passes out with Cas' hand in his.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for seven days and the hospital has moved him from the ICU to a private room. It had a bathroom so Dean showered in there, the quickest shower of his life, and left the door open to hear Cas. The one male nurse, a young kid who looks exactly like Adam, brought him a spare set of scrubs to wear while he washed Dean's clothes for him. He asks Sam to bring a six pack for the kid the next time he visits to say thanks.

His brain function has gotten better. There's some more activity and the doctors keep telling Dean that any day now, Cas will wake up. They said the cardiac arrest two days ago shouldn't happen again, that they're monitoring his heart more closely now, that it's okay for Dean to leave him again. Dean smiles and ushers them out of the room as politely as he can. They're dicks but they're the dicks who are keeping Cas alive and right now, Dean's just desperate enough to forgive them for that.

Yesterday Brian (that's the kid's name) showed Dean the channel that the staff has in the break room which is playing Star Trek and Indiana Jones' movies this week. Dean watched the first season of Star Trek with Cas that afternoon and talked to him the whole time. Today they get through half of the second season and the first Indiana Jones movie, with Dean talking the whole time. He's supposed to talk to Cas, it's supposed to help, but Dean can't bring himself to talk to the angel about important stuff during the day. The day is reserved for one-sided chatter and crash-courses in pop-culture while they lay in bed together. One day they'll do this and it won't just be Dean talking.

The nights are safer for Dean. Rounds are every two hours instead of every twenty minutes so he has more time to talk to Cas without anyone listening in. Most nights he tells Cas to wake up, he asks him to, he begs him to wake up, and then passes out. That night Dean prays to Cas again, just like he did last night, just like he expects he'll do every night until his angel wakes up. "Please man... just wake up for me. I've got something I need to tell you Cas and I can't tell you if you're takin' a nap. I mean I know you didn't sleep for millions of years but I think a week's enough... Please wake up."

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for eight days when his hand flexes for all of a quarter of a second. The doctors are convinced it's because the swelling in his brain has started to go down and that he really will be waking up any day now. Dean knows it's because he let go of Cas' hand to sign something Sam sent over. Again he promises not to leave.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for nine days when Dean thinks he hears a whimper coming from his angel in the middle of the night. He can't be sure, but the whimper could be coming from himself too. Today wasn't the best day. So he covers them back up (Dean's still not used to sleeping under the sheets) and rests his head on Cas' chest again. "It's okay angel... I got you. Won't let anything else happen to you."

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for ten days and Dean thinks he's getting sick of Star Trek. When Brian comes in to check on them again, even though he's not working on this floor, Dean asks him if there are other channels or something else to watch. Sam is there and asks Brian to check his brother for a head trauma, make sure he's alright. Dean's only response is a shrug and a half-hearted 'bitch' for his brother.

By now he's read Cas "The Hobbit" and the first couple chapters of Harry Potter, gone into embarrassingly nerdy detail about why Batman is his favorite superhero of all time and why he thinks Cas should wake up and be his Robin. There's tiny responses to his presence throughout the day; an increased heartbeat here, a muscle flutter there, a calm heartbeat whenever Dean was holding his hand. It was almost like he knew that Dean was there and shit, neither brother is entirely convinced that he doesn't know. It's enough to make Sam notice and it's enough to make him ask, "So... how are you? Really?"

"How do you think I am, Sammy?" Dean doesn't like the way his voice sounds to himself. It's raw from overuse and he's pretty sure he's never talked this much in his life; hearing it just reminds him why it's so rough and the tiniest bit of emotion that might sneak its way in there doesn't help his cause. Sam doesn't the cause of keeping Dean's manhood in check either, "I don't know man. All I'm saying is if it was Amelia or Jess laying in this bed... I'd be a fucking wreck." The chuckle that elicits from Dean is real because his brother is trying to say something without actually saying it and it's fucking ridiculous, "Well then I guess you know how I am, Sammy."

That night after his brother's gone home, Dean kneels on the floor next to the hospital bed and prays to God for what is probably the first time in his life. He stays like that for a few minutes and when the silence gets too much, he gets up and gets back into bed with Cas. Dean falls asleep telling his angel the story of how Sam lost his virginity. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it earns him a smile.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for fifteen days. Dean hasn't gone farther than the bathroom since the incident ten days ago. Sam has either come by to bring Dean food or called everyday to check on both of them. It's been a week since he admitted to his younger brother that he loves Cas and they haven't talked about it since but Sam brings him pie and whiskey a couple times in between and that speaks volumes in Winchester.

Sam didn't tell Dean he was coming by today and the nurses smile at him as he walks past the nurses' station, kindly ignoring the giant bag of food he's got tucked under one arm in favor of picking apart the donuts he's set on the desk. When Sam gets to Cas' room he doesn't see what he's expecting (Dean lying in bed watching TV with the angel or talking to him or reading to him or just watching him sometimes). Dean's leaning over Cas with their foreheads resting against each other. It's hard to tell from here but it looks like Dean's saying something and squeezing his hand every minute or so, like he's trying to tell Cas that he's still here. The closer Sam gets to the door the easier it is to hear him...

"Hey… it's me, uh, God… I don't know if you are real. I don't know if I've been talking to myself the past couple days with this but I'm desperate here, man. I need you to save Cas. Please. I need him... And I'm fucking terrified that he's never going to wake up. He's your kid man, he's still an angel, he's still... he's still Castiel. He still loves you and he still believes in you and I just... I can't do this, any of it, without him. Please. Please just... wake up, Cas."

Dean is so focused (or maybe tired) that he doesn't hear Sam set the bag of food down on the table by the door and then leave again. He sends his brother a thank you text an hour later when he's done eating the cold food and falls asleep next to Cas again.

- [ ] -

Cas has been in a coma for seventeen days when he wakes up with a sleeping Dean in scrubs half on top of him and a sleeping Sam sitting in the chair next to him. It hurts like hell to move his unsquished arm and Cas has no idea where the fuck they are but he feels the overwhelming desire to brush the hair that has fallen on Dean's face away.

The movement wakes the hunter up and he's ninety percent sure this is a dream because there are blue eyes staring back at him and the ridiculously messy brown hair on the pillow next to him is staring at Dean like he has four heads. "Cas...?"

"Hello Dean." Their first kiss is after Cas has been in the hospital for almost a month and even though it only adds to the confusion that the poor bastard is facing, neither man can deny that it's fucking perfect and so right that it physically hurts to pull back. Cas has the same look on his face that Dean did when the angel came back from Purgatory and cleaned himself off ('Better?' Damn right), "Dean... what...?"

"You've been in a coma for seventeen days, we're at a hospital somewhere in Illinois, the nurses think your name is Dmitri and that I'm your husband Will, I haven't left your bed in two weeks, I'm in love with you and I swear to god if you ever scare me like that again I am going to send you back to heaven myself."

Cas nodded slowly and smiled a little at the last part of Dean's rant before there were lips on his again. "Sorry. Wanted to make sure you were real."

- [ Epilogue ] -

It's been six months since Cas was in the hospital. They've found a house not far from where Bobby's used to be and are fixing it up. They still hunt occasionally, if something particularly nasty is close or Dean feels like it. Sam's in Texas with Amelia and a dog.

Their first night in the newly finished house Cas tells Dean that he remembers most of the stuff Dean said to him when they were in the hospital. He remembers the confessions, the rants, the stories, the begging, the threats, the prayers to anyone and everyone he could remember from the bible that might have been able to help. By the end of the confession Dean's bright red and hiding his face in his pillow of their bed. "But that's not the most important thing that I remember..."

"Oh...?" It's shaky at best, a barely concealed 'shit shit shit', and Dean doesn't remember giving his mouth permission to continue on, "What's that?"

"I believe you promised that one day you would marry me."  
"...Right."  
"I would rather enjoy being married to you."  
"...Hey Cas?"  
"My answer is yes."  
"Awesome."


End file.
